Italian Court Realizes That Yahoo Isn't Liable For Infringing Works Found Via Its Search Engine

from the secondary-liability dept

Qûr Tharkasdóttir alerts us to the news that an earlier court ruling in Italy, that placed liability on Yahoo for not magically knowing how to block all links that might lead to certain infringing material, has been overturned. Apparently, the higher court realized that applying such third party liability was crazy (Google translation from the original Italian. The translation is a bit funky, but it seems clear that the court recognized the basic problems of telling Yahoo it must automatically block all links that might lead to infringing movies based solely on the title of that movie. Chalk one up for common sense... though it's a shame it had to wait until an appeal to get the ruling right.

i LOVE IT

this is as bad as suing the PHONE BOOK for listing an adult book store, or listing a Muslim church..
Or, looking for a book on Living off the grid, Jungle Survival, Ayn rand..
Or dialing 411, 555-1212...and trying to find a business in your area..

OK, lets ban dialing up the operator to find a NON-EMERGENCY call to the hospital/police/fire dept..

Lets ban libraries for teaching you HOW to do plumbing, because most of those PARTS are Under Patent protection.

Lets ban books in school, as they are copyrighted..Which is funny, as History shouldnt be copy protected.

But what about Google Video

If Yahoo isn't liable based solely on that it has links to the movie...then what about that infamous Google Video case from a short while back? Where Google Video executives were found guilty of a crime because they weren't quite quick enough to take down links to an offensive video?